Accused teen hitman's family hard hit by drugs, crime

By the time Edgar was 18 months old, his mother was arrested at a drug house in southeastern San Diego for possession of rock cocaine. The next month, Edgar and his siblings were sent to live with their paternal grandmother, Carmen Solis Gil, in Cuernavaca, Mexico, a tourism destination about 40 miles south of Mexico City.

She died about six years ago — around the time that Edgar was getting into fights in the second grade, eventually being expelled after he punched a girl.

“When Doña Carmen was alive, those kids didn’t get in trouble,” Yolanda’s relative said. “Everything started coming apart when she died.”

The details about Edgar and his family come from official documents and interviews in San Diego and Mexico with relatives, friends, neighbors and authorities.

But how he became part of a gang associated with the splintered Beltran Leyva cartel remains unclear.

What is known is that the Mexican army arrested Edgar on Dec. 2 at the airport near Cuernavaca. The military then twice paraded him before a throng of news media, first at the airport and then the next day in Mexico City.

His place in the spotlight followed the posting of a YouTube video last month showing teens — including one called “El Ponchis,” Edgar’s nickname — boasting about decapitating cartel enemies. The footage created a buzz throughout Mexico and led to a military hunt for the youthful hitmen.

Turbulent lives

Edgar’s parents met in their hometown of Jiutepec, a suburb southeast of Cuernavaca.

David worked as an assembler for three years for Nissan before he and Yolanda, along with their two young daughters, entered the United States in 1989.

The family crossed through the mountains, said a relative of Yolanda’s who lives in San Diego. David became a legal U.S. resident; Yolanda didn’t.

“They came for a better life,” the relative said.

Once in San Diego, David did factory and construction work and took part-time jobs as a laborer. Yolanda was a homemaker.

In all, she and David had seven children, including another “cocaine baby” born right before Edgar and given up for adoption.

It was around 1994 when David started using cocaine. “He introduced her to that life,” Yolanda’s relative said.

Even after their children were taken from them by county Child Protective Services, the couple’s troubles, including substance abuse, continued.

Less than a year after Edgar’s birth, David was arrested a second time for domestic violence.

In July 1997 came Yolanda’s arrest for rock-cocaine possession. By then, she was estranged from David. A probation report quoted a Child Protective Services worker saying David was allegedly “gunning for” Yolanda, and that “she has basically been homeless or ‘on the move.’ ”

The next month, the couple’s six children were sent to their 71-year-old grandmother, who was in the process of adopting them.

Then in September, San Diego undercover detectives arrested David at a drug house for possession of rock cocaine. He was sentenced to a year in jail. It’s not clear if he was deported, but he did return to Mexico.